A starting point for Neovim that is:

• Small
• Single-file
• Completely Documented

NOT a Neovim distribution, but instead a starting point for your configuration.

Kickstart.nvim targets only the latest 'stable' and latest 'nightly' of Neovim. If you are experiencing issues, please make sure you have at least the latest stable version. Most likely, you want to install neovim via a package manager. To check your neovim version, run nvim --version and make sure it is not below the latest 'stable' version. If your chosen install method only gives you an outdated version of neovim, find alternative installation methods below.

External Requirements:

• Basic utils: git, make, unzip, C Compiler (gcc)
• ripgrep, fd-find
• tree-sitter CLI
• Clipboard tool (xclip/xsel/win32yank or other depending on the platform)
• A Nerd Font: optional, provides various icons
  • if you have it set vim.g.have_nerd_font in init.lua to true
• Emoji fonts (Ubuntu only, and only if you want emoji!) sudo apt install fonts-noto-color-emoji
• Language Setup:
  • If you want to write Typescript, you need npm
  • If you want to write Golang, you will need go
  • etc.

Neovim's configurations are located under the following paths, depending on your OS:

Create your own copy of this repo using GitHub's "Use this template" button so that you have your own copy that you can modify, then install by cloning your new repo to your machine using one of the commands below, depending on your OS.

Alternatively, you can fork this repo if you prefer an easy upstream sync path (e.g., keeping your config on a separate branch and fast-forwarding master from upstream). See the discussion in #1740 for the tradeoffs between the two approaches.

You likely want to remove nvim-pack-lock.json from your repo's .gitignore file too - it's ignored in the kickstart repo to make maintenance easier, but it's recommended to track it in version control (see :help vim.pack-lockfile).

git clone https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim.git "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}"/nvim

If you're using cmd.exe:

git clone https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim.git "%localappdata%\nvim"

If you're using powershell.exe

git clone https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim.git "${env:LOCALAPPDATA}\nvim"

Start Neovim

nvim

That's it! vim.pack will install all the plugins from your config. Use :lua vim.pack.update(nil, { offline = true }) to inspect plugin state and :lua vim.pack.update() to fetch updates (:write applies updates, :quit cancels them).

Read through the init.lua file in your configuration folder for more information about extending and exploring Neovim. That also includes examples of adding popularly requested plugins.

The Only Video You Need to Get Started with Neovim

• What should I do if I already have a pre-existing Neovim configuration?
  • You should back it up and then delete all associated files.
  • This includes your existing init.lua and the Neovim files in ~/.local which can be deleted with rm -rf ~/.local/share/nvim/
• Can I keep my existing configuration in parallel to kickstart?
  • Yes! You can use NVIM_APPNAME=nvim-NAME to maintain multiple configurations. For example, you can install the kickstart configuration in ~/.config/nvim-kickstart and create an alias:

    alias nvim-kickstart='NVIM_APPNAME="nvim-kickstart" nvim'
    

    When you run Neovim using nvim-kickstart alias it will use the alternative config directory and the matching local directory ~/.local/share/nvim-kickstart. You can apply this approach to any Neovim distribution that you would like to try out.
• What if I want to "uninstall" this configuration:
  • Remove your config directory and local data directory (for example, ~/.config/nvim and ~/.local/share/nvim).
• Why is the kickstart init.lua a single file? Wouldn't it make sense to split it into multiple files?
  • The main purpose of kickstart is to serve as a teaching tool and a reference configuration that someone can easily use to git clone as a basis for their own. As you progress in learning Neovim and Lua, you might consider splitting init.lua into smaller parts. A fork of kickstart that does this while maintaining the same functionality is available here:
    • kickstart-modular.nvim
  • Discussions on this topic can be found here:
    • Restructure the configuration
    • Reorganize init.lua into a multi-file setup

Below you can find OS specific install instructions for Neovim and dependencies.

After installing all the dependencies continue with the Install Kickstart step.

Recommended: install make (see the chocolatey section below).

If you want a CMake-only setup, customize init.lua in two places:

1. Include telescope-fzf-native.nvim when cmake is available:

if vim.fn.executable 'make' == 1 or vim.fn.executable 'cmake' == 1 then
  table.insert(plugins, gh 'nvim-telescope/telescope-fzf-native.nvim')
end

2. In the PackChanged hook, use CMake when make is unavailable:

if name == 'telescope-fzf-native.nvim' then
  if vim.fn.executable 'make' == 1 then
    run_build(name, { 'make' }, ev.data.path)
  elseif vim.fn.executable 'cmake' == 1 then
    run_build(name, { 'cmake', '-S.', '-Bbuild', '-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release' }, ev.data.path)
    run_build(name, { 'cmake', '--build', 'build', '--config', 'Release', '--target', 'install' }, ev.data.path)
  end
  return
end

See telescope-fzf-native documentation for build details.

1. install chocolatey either follow the instructions on the page or use winget, run in cmd as admin:

winget install --accept-source-agreements chocolatey.chocolatey

2. install all requirements using choco, exit the previous cmd and open a new one so that choco path is set, and run in cmd as admin:

choco install -y neovim git ripgrep wget fd unzip gzip mingw make tree-sitter

wsl --install
wsl
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:neovim-ppa/unstable -y
sudo apt update
sudo apt install make gcc ripgrep fd-find tree-sitter-cli unzip git xclip neovim

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:neovim-ppa/unstable -y
sudo apt update
sudo apt install make gcc ripgrep fd-find tree-sitter-cli unzip git xclip neovim

sudo apt update
sudo apt install make gcc ripgrep fd-find tree-sitter-cli unzip git xclip curl

# Now we install nvim
curl -LO https://github.com/neovim/neovim/releases/latest/download/nvim-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
sudo rm -rf /opt/nvim-linux-x86_64
sudo mkdir -p /opt/nvim-linux-x86_64
sudo chmod a+rX /opt/nvim-linux-x86_64
sudo tar -C /opt -xzf nvim-linux-x86_64.tar.gz

# make it available in /usr/local/bin, distro installs to /usr/bin
sudo ln -sf /opt/nvim-linux-x86_64/bin/nvim /usr/local/bin/

sudo dnf install -y gcc make git ripgrep fd-find tree-sitter-cli unzip neovim

sudo pacman -S --noconfirm --needed gcc make git ripgrep fd tree-sitter-cli unzip neovim

For some systems it is not unexpected that the package manager installation method recommended by neovim is significantly behind. If that is the case for you, pick one of the following methods that are known to deliver fresh neovim versions very quickly. They have been picked for their popularity and because they make installing and updating neovim to the latest versions easy. You can also find more detail about the available methods being discussed here.

Bob is a Neovim version manager for all platforms. Simply install rustup, and run the following commands:

rustup default stable
rustup update stable
cargo install bob-nvim
bob use stable

Homebrew is a package manager popular on Mac and Linux. Simply install using brew install.

Flatpak is a package manager for applications that allows developers to package their applications just once to make it available on all Linux systems. Simply install flatpak and setup flathub to install neovim.

asdf and mise are tool version managers, mostly aimed towards project-specific tool versioning. However both support managing tools globally in the user-space as well:

Install mise, then run:

mise plugins install neovim
mise use neovim@stable

Install asdf, then run:

asdf plugin add neovim
asdf install neovim stable
asdf set neovim stable --home
asdf reshim neovim